Conventionally, in an automobile or the like, a wire harness protector is used to protect the wire harness from interference by other members, and to hold the wire harness at a predetermined position in the vehicle. With this wire harness protector, for example, the wire harness is inserted through and housed in a housing portion of a protector main body, and the protector main body is fixed to the vehicle body through a vehicle fixing portion that protrudes from the protector main body, the wire harness is held at a predetermined position of the vehicle, and is protected by the wire harness protector.
Ordinarily, a ground terminal provided in the wire harness is connected to the vehicle body of the automobile to establish grounding.
However, when attempting to directly connect the ground terminal to the vehicle body, the length of a ground wire increases, so gross weight and cost of the wire harness increases, and there is a risk that the routing mode of the wire harness will be limited.
Consequently, the present applicant, in JP H4-10964U (Patent Document 1), has proposed a wire harness protector having a grounding function. That is, in the second and third drawings of Patent Document 1, in the wire harness protector, a conductive metal fitting is adopted where one end portion can be fixed by bolting to a vehicle body, and a ground terminal connecting portion is provided in another end portion, and a ground connection to the vehicle body can be realized by connecting the ground terminal connecting portion to a ground terminal. With this wire harness protector, it is possible to reduce the length of a ground wire by providing the ground terminal connecting portion within the housing portion.
However, with the wire harness protector disclosed in the second and third drawings of Patent Document 1, the ground terminal and the ground terminal connecting portion are connected by inserting a male terminal into a female terminal, and in the connection of the ground terminal with the ground terminal connecting portion, there is room for improvement with respect to work efficiency and certainty.
Here, the present design was made against the background of the circumstances described above, and aims to provide a wire harness protector having a grounding function with a new structure, whereby it is possible to effectively improve assembly work efficiency when forming a connection between a ground terminal and a ground connection terminal, and possible to stabilize and suppress poor contact points in this connection.